Apparel, clothing items, footwear and other articles are susceptible to counterfeiting, particularly those of famous and highly desirable brands. Some counterfeit articles can be difficult to distinguish from authentic articles to the untrained eye or the undiscerning individual. Better counterfeit articles can be almost indistinguishable from authentic articles even by experts and professional testing equipment.
Many systems and devices have been developed to identify authentic items with an absolute degree of certainty. U.S. Pat. No. 6,891,474 to Fletcher describes many such systems in the Background section and is itself directed to the use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags to verify the authenticity of articles. However, incorporation of RFID tags into apparel can be difficult in a manner that prevents detection, tampering and removal of the tag. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 8,308,073 to Lai et al. describes an RFID tag incorporated into the laces of a shoe.